Zoologists capture elephant's 'Eureka!' moment

For the first time, zoologists have captured elephants
experiencing what they have termed the "Eureka" moment, proving
that these mammals are capable of insightful problem solving.

The project, which brought together zoologists from New York
and Washington, saw three Asian elephants studied as they were given certain tasks
to complete that required problem solving.

The two adult females, a 33-year-old and a 61-year-old, and a
7-year-old juvenile male, Kandula, reside at the Smithsonian National Zoological
Park, Washington, DC. They were first given bamboo sticks to
see if they would use these as tools to obtain fruit placed out of
reach on the opposite side of the bars of their indoor enclosure.
While the scientists did observe the elephants manipulating the
sticks like tools, they did not use them to try and reach the
sticks.

The team queried whether the elephants' failure was as a result of their "lack of
problem solving ability, or rather that the bars were impeding the
elephants' performance or that the tasks were not ecologically
valid". They decided to create a new task for which a branch baited
with food was hung out of "trunk reach" but a box strong enough to
the elephant to stand on was placed within the enclosure. Each
elephant was individually tested over a couple of days and the
video below shows the moment that Kandula, having already used the
cube once to reach the food, did it again -- this time dragging the cube
from out of frame to set it beneath the branch.

Kandula had been trained to stand on the box for play but the scientists argue that this was only one
component of the problem-solving task. They write: "…the sequence of behaviour
exhibited by Kandula, moving the cube and standing on it to reach
food, constitutes a more complex series of events that cannot be
accounted for by past training."

The team also says that previous studies may have failed to
excite the "Eureka" moment because they treated the elephant's trunk as "a grasping appendage analogous to a
primate hand". They explain that although the trunk can be
manipulated "…in food foraging its function as a sensory organ may
take precedence"; but "when a stick is held in the trunk, the tip
is curled backwards and may be closed, prohibiting olfactory and
tactile feedback".

But, when given the right tools, they claim that elephants, like
humans and several other species, can demonstrate "aha"
moments.

Comments

Try attaching those implants that give an elephant access to robotic arms. Within 20 generations of a colony or few in communication with humans we could have a new race living alongside us. Who best but the Indians to carry out this endeavour?Meanwhile the worst of the Mahouts should immediately be sent to interspecies relations classes, their actions in some cases are particularly inhumane and would result in Pachyderm inspired lawsuits for 1000s of years of slavery and demands for reparations no end. Africa has not yet finished with the former colonial masters, so Indians, treat the elephant with dignity and respect, give them space to be elephants because what the worst of India did to elephants may come back to haunt India someday when the first elephant claims semi-deity status with Ganesh as the patron God of elephant kind !Next to address, chickens - what evolutionary efforts could be made, would they want to fry humans if given the chance . . . learn to grow lab based meat or even all sorts of food, there looks to be a terrible dilemna about to beset humanity's eating habits . . .